London Under (17 page)

The designers of the Cabinet War Room under Whitehall,
L.C. Hollis and L.F. Burgis, in April 1946
(illustration credit Ill.39)

The portal at High
Holborn is, at the moment of
writing, covered by scaffolding. But if you peer through the glass doorway, you can see what looks to be a derelict lift. This is the lift that takes you eight floors down into the underworld. Two half-mile tunnels lie there, South Street and Second Avenue, as well as other tunnels constructed in the early 1950s. There is room for eighty people, with dining rooms and communal living areas as well as private cubicles. A six-month store of food was once kept here.

The
Whitehall tunnels and the Holborn tunnels were then connected by a further tunnel beneath
Covent Garden and extending south into
Trafalgar Square. It comprised a miniature city beneath the surface. A journalist from the
New Statesman
,
Duncan Campbell, penetrated this network of underground passages more than thirty years ago. He revealed that there were over thirty access shafts that “connect these catacombs with the surface, most of them emerging unobtrusively in government buildings or telephone exchanges.” He found his own portal on a traffic island in
Bethnal Green Road, as neglected and invisible an entrance as you could hope for. He descended 100 feet, complete with bicycle, and then began his ride under the ground. He described the air as “fusty.”

He passed through the tunnel beneath St. Martin-le-Grand, close to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and then journeyed west to Holborn by way of
Fleet Street. He then went on to Whitehall, all the while guided by signs pointing
to the various destinations. Among them were
Whitehall,
the Mall,
Leicester Square,
Waterloo and
Lord’s Cricket Ground—all of them connected by a system of deep-level tunnels. He estimated the principal tunnel to be some 20 feet in width, with subsidiary tunnels of 9 feet. He found a red signal in one of them warning “Danger”; this tunnel “is unventilated and has no air in it.” But “implausibly disguised as a touring cyclist I have often visited these tunnels.”

He re-emerged in the bowels of the
Holborn Telephone Exchange. Campbell has published some photographs of his journey. The tunnels are eerie and somehow unsettling, like pictures of the deep ocean floor or the craters upon Mars. It was an astonishing journey, worthy to be recorded alongside other London pilgrimages. It can never be made again, however; after Campbell published the account of his escapade, in the
New Statesman
of 16 December 1980, all entrances to the system were carefully secured. This may be viewed as secrecy for the sake of secrecy, pointless and farcical, but it is testimony to the fascination that the underworld still exerts.

Other hidden passages run beneath Whitehall, some of them dug 200 feet below the surface. In one of them is situated the emergency strategy group known as
COBRA. A newspaper report has described it as “an air-pressurised network of low-ceilinged corridors leading to a large and dimly lit room.” Tunnels weave beneath
New Oxford Street, and also in the area between the
Strand and the Embankment. Various government departments of
Westminster were placed in alignment, so that an underground refuge could be provided for hundreds or thousands of civil servants in the event of an attack; this was known as the “black move.” A huge bunker is supposed to have been built beneath
Parliament Square.

It is believed that a tunnel under the Thames joins the MI6 building at
Vauxhall with the MI5 headquarters at
Millbank; the
Victoria Line between
Pimlico and Vauxhall shadows its course. The Victoria Line does in fact pass beneath many notable buildings, and comes very close to
Buckingham Palace. It has often been suggested that, at a time of grave national peril, it could be used to take senior ministers and members of the royal family out of London. A deep underground line was built to connect
Elephant and Castle with
Camberwell Green; it was supposed to be part of the Bakerloo Line, but in the 1950s its opening was “deferred.” The tunnels still exist, but no trains run along them.

Wherever you look, underground London offers an echo or double image of the world above. Beneath the 7 acres of
Lincoln’s Inn Fields is an underground network that in 1939 was designed to harbour 1,300 people. There were, or are,
underground trenches beneath
Eaton Square,
Vincent Square and
Golden Square; refuges were also built beneath
Hyde Park,
Green Park and
St. James’s Park. Smaller trench systems were constructed
beneath eighteen other London landmarks, from
Shepherd’s Bush Common to the gardens of the Geffrye Museum in
Shoreditch; they are now unknown and unseen. The tram subway running through
Kingsway became for a while a subterranean flood-control centre kept away from the public gaze. It now lies empty and disused. But perhaps it is not altogether empty. One subterranean voyager, Michael Harrison, ended his account of secret tunnels in
London Beneath the Pavement
(1961) with a terse epigraph. He dedicated the book “DIS MANIBUS.” To the gods of the underworld.

The people of prehistory took refuge in caves, reserving the innermost recesses for sacred activity. At times of warfare in the twentieth century, when death came from the sky, many Londoners sought instinctively for safety beneath the earth.

In the First World War hundreds of thousands of people went down into the Underground system in order to escape the depredations of the Zeppelin airships. This was unofficial activity, not supervised or controlled, and no government shelters were ever provided. It was agreed that people could take refuge on the platforms if an air raid was actually under way, but not in anticipation of an attack. In other circumstances a ticket was always required before entrance was permitted. Some passengers bought the cheapest ticket, and then continued around and around the
Circle Line until the likely danger had passed. At the time of most danger, in February 1918, the number of shelterers reached one-third of a million. There were some famous underground refugees.
George V and the senior members of the royal family were, at the times of Zeppelin raids, taken into the tunnels near
Buckingham Palace.

The experience of the First World War was enough to alert the authorities of a later conflict to the danger of a mass descent into the tunnels and platforms. It was assumed that the underground refugees in the Second World War would hinder the movement of trains carrying the dead away from central London to communal
graves. More significantly, it was feared by officials from the Home Office and the Ministry of Health that Londoners might develop what was known as a “deep shelter mentality” and refuse to come to the surface. It was believed, and stated, that the civilian population was likely to suffer “a mass outbreak of hysterical neurosis” as a result of prolonged and intense bombing. Experts in the psychology of crowds suggested that “people would regress to an earlier level of needs and desires.”

That “earlier level” was of course enshrined in the Underground system itself, whereby people would descend into deep levels of the past. A spiritual, as well as chronological, dimension can be found in this flight beneath the earth. The citizens would become children again and “would demand, with the all or nothing vehemence of infants, the security, food and warmth which the mother used to give in the past.” So many of them wished to return to the depths of Mother Earth.

At the beginning of the Second World War, therefore, London Transport displayed
posters stating that “Underground Stations Must Not Be Used As Air-Raid Shelters.” But who could thwart the primeval instinct of humankind? Three years before the outbreak of the war a film, entitled
Things to Come
, depicted hordes of anxious Londoners fleeing for safety from enemy attack into the bowels of the Underground. So the citizens in large part ignored the official warnings; they purchased cheap
tickets, and then simply refused to come up again.
In a complementary development some Londoners fled to adjacent caves in the tracks of their remote ancestors. The miles of
Chislehurst Caves, dug over a period of 8,000 years, became the shelter for as many as 15,000 people. A hospital and a chapel, a cinema and a gymnasium, were built 70 feet under the ground just 10 miles from London.

The government had already taken its own precautions. Various
government departments migrated underground. The empty passages and disused platforms of
Down Street and
Dover Street were pressed into service, while various rooms and passages connected with
Hyde Park Corner,
Knightsbridge and
Holborn became part of the secret world of war management. The
Tate Gallery stored much of its collection on disused Underground stations on the Piccadilly and
Central Lines.
The Elgin Marbles were lowered into an empty tunnel beneath
Aldwych. A stretch of the Central Line, a 5-mile section of tunnel from
Leytonstone to
Gants Hill, was turned into an underground factory for the manufacture of spare parts for tanks.

In the first months of the war the raids on London were light and infrequent, but by the autumn of 1940 they became intense and sustained. In their panic the Londoners went under. They came with their children and bought
tickets, costing 1½ pence, that gave them access to the underground platforms. If the first platform was overcrowded they boarded the train, and
moved onto the next. Some people came in cars and motor coaches from the outlying boroughs, much to the resentment of the locals. The
Railway Gazette
reported that “the vast majority of offenders are members of alien races or at least of alien extraction.” The truth of the claim is dubious, but it emphasises the extent to which an underground race might be considered to be “alien.” The connotations of life beneath the surface were still injurious.

The people came with deckchairs, and rugs, and umbrellas; they brought quantities of food with them, some with as much as a fortnight’s rations. They had come to stay. By six in the evening the passengers of the trains had to pick their way among recumbent bodies; two hours later, the platforms were so overcrowded that it was impossible to walk along them. The atmosphere became almost unbearable, and many people were forced to the surface for a few minutes to gulp the fresh air. A plague of mosquitoes, hatched in the unnatural warmth, caused further discomfort. When the electric current was switched off after the last train had passed, some shelterers squatted on the track. They also lay on the steps and the
escalators.

When the sculptor
Henry Moore descended into the
Northern Line,

It is an apt image of a vessel of slaves. In his drawings they become wraiths in the darkness, the pale cargo of humankind helpless in a world that has turned against them.